Violet Smith poses for a photo in her home in City Island. She lost her grandson Gary Gunzl in 2008 due to a heroin overdose.

With its tidy rows of homes and a fishing village atmosphere, City Island seems like one of the last places that would have a drug problem.

Yet there have been three fatal overdoses — and a near-fatal one — in the past year, and enough evidence of drug abuse to raise concern that the island of 4,500 people has a growing problem.Gary Gunzl suffered one of those fatal overdoses at 18.

“It still hurts, but I would do anything to save just one other kid. Anything,” said his grandmother and legal guardian, Violet Smith.

“I really thought his death would mean something. The funeral parlor was filled with kids his age. And a month later, we had a memorial service and they were all there again. And I thought that might help, and it hasn’t. We still hear of things. You keep hearing of things.”

“We have heroin sales and prescription drug sales like you wouldn’t believe. It’s getting bad. This never happened on City Island before,” said Bill Stanton, president of the City Island Civic Association.

“People are smoking heroin now,” said Barbara Dolensek, a longtime island activist. “At the end of Ditmars St., we recently found a heroin pipe.”

She said that Stanton was walking his dogs past the cemetery on King Ave. when he found a heroin container and syringes.

At the island’s only school, Public School 175, Dolensek said, “We hear from kids there’s a drug and graffiti problem in the seventh and eighth grades there.

Violet Smith poses for a photo in her home in City Island. She lost her grandson Gary Gunzl in 2008 due to a heroin overdose.

“We are still the Bronx, remember,” sighed Dolensek, “although we sometimes tend to forget it.”

Police believe the problem is mostly confined to marijuana.

“There’s a lot of kids smoking weed,” said a police source. “Maybe they’re just seeing hard drug use pop up.”

“It’s terrible. And the problem is magnified because the island is so small. You feel threatened. I used to keep the door open. Now I keep it locked.”

Meanwhile, Smith said, memories of Gunzl are strongest when she sees the water.

“I thought the water would save him,” she said. “He loved the water. And he loved fishing. With all the demons he obviously had, I thought that might eventually pull him away. But he didn’t hang on long enough.”